User Support
Status Report: May - September 2011
Tom Yoksas, Jen Oxelson, UPC Staff
Strategic Focus Areas
The Group Name group's work supports the following Unidata funding proposal focus areas:
- Broadening participation and expanding community services
- Enhancing user support services
- Promoting diversity by expanding opportunities
Activities Since the Last Status Report
Training
The UPC held its annual training workshp series on July 11-26 in its offices in Boulder. 69 participants from U.S. and international universities, U.S. Government agencies and private companies filled hands-on training sessions for 6 areas:
- GEMPAK with an Introduction to AWIPS-II
- LDM
- IDV
- THREDDS Data Server (TDS)
- netCDF for New Users
- netCDF Annual Update
As in 2010, a McIDAS training session was not included in the schedule, but it announced that it would be offered if enough interest was was expressed.
Community eLetters Transitioned to News@Unidata
The Community eLetter that has been issued once-per-month for over a decade has been replaced with a synopsis of activities of interest and renamed News@Unidata.
Webserver Update
A replacement for Unidata's main web server is being readied. The new web server will provide the opportunity to take advantage of the public-support capabilities of the eSupport ticketing system.
A major mailing list cull has taken place.
Relevant User Support Metrics
Since January 26, 2006 over 28690 user support "transactions" (new inquiries and follow-ups) have been processed through the Unidata inquiry tracking system.
Support by Category
Fig. 1: Above are histograms that portray the number of Unidata email responses for categories of support for a one year period ending October 3, 2011. The histograms are arranged by yearly activity averages with the highest on the left and lowest on the right. Each quarter year within the period is depicted from oldest to newest from left to right. The number of responses has been normalized to weekly averages so that the support load over the various periods can be easily compared.
Individual support activities included in the categories depicted above are listed in the following table.
| Category | Packages, Groups, and Lists |
| data | casestudies, casestudies-list, conduit, c2-linda, craft, craft-nws, cr aft-ty, datastream, difax, level2, level2-linda, level2-ty, noaaport, noaaport-t y, noaaportldm |
| dods | dods, dods-core, dods-list, dods-tech, dods-team, linda-dods, opendap, opendap-core, opendap-list, opendap-tech, opendap-team |
| gempak | gempak, gembud-list |
| ldm | ldm, ldm-users-list |
| lead | lead, leadusers |
| idd | cluster, idd, idd-antarctic, idd-brasil, idd-caribe, idd-inject, idd-s tatus, scoop, suominet, tigge |
| idv | idv, idvlist, idvsteering, metapps, visad-list, visad-renderer |
| mcidas | mcdevelop, mcidas, mcidas-list |
| miscellaneous | esupport, fxlinux, license, misc, network, notrack, platforms, wxp, wx p-list |
| netcdf | data-models, libcf, ncml, netcdf, netcdf-misc, netcdfgroup-list, netcd f-hdf-list, netcdf-java, netcdf-perl |
| nws-changes | nws-changes |
| outreach | agu-linda, agu-ty, ams-linda, announce, argentina-ty, barbados-ty, bra zil-ty, cbmet-ty, chile-ty, egrants, egu-linda, external, iai-ty, meteoforum-ty, mexico-ty, noaa-linda, nws-linda, unidata, workshop |
| thredds | java-dev, java-dev-list, thredds |
| utilities | decoders, ldm-mcidas, udunits |
Support by Topic
Fig. 2: Above are histograms that portray the number of Unidata email responses for individual topics of support for a one year period ending October 3, 2011. The histograms are arranged by yearly activity averages with the highest on the left and lowest on the right. Each quarter year within the period is depicted from oldest to newest from left to right. The number of responses has been normalized to weekly averages so that the support load over the various periods can be easily compared.
Comments
- The total support provided by the UPC remains high, and yearly totals have been relatively steady for the past two years. Overall support activities vary by somewhat by quarter. Spikes in support for individual packages is largely correlated with the release of new distributions, and, for the IDV in particular, jumps after training workshops.
- Support for netCDF continues to be substantial, and is understandable given the large number of users of the package worldwide.
- The IDV support load is second only to that for netCDF; no large increases have been seen over the past 6 months.
- Support for netcdf-java continues to grow steadily.
- Support for the legacy visualization packages GEMPAK and McIDAS continues to be substantial.
- Support for LDM, IDD, and data continues at a high level and shows some variability throughout the year.
- Taken as a whole, the support required for visualization packages (GEMPAK, IDV, and McIDAS) is comparable to the support related to data reception (LDM, IDD, noaaport).
- The high numbers for outreach reflect the high level of activity in organizing sessions at various national meetings.
Notes
These numbers and conclusions should not be taken too literally, for several reasons:
- For some packages, multiple responses in the same thread may be bundled into a single archived email. Other packages have each response in a thread counted separately.
- After a new release of software, there may be a flurry of the same or similar questions, which can be answered in separate emails or in a single mailing list posting.
- The graph primarily represents support of end users and site administrators, not developers. Support for non-Unidata developers in projects such as THREDDS, IDV, GEMPAK, and McIDAS requires significant resources, but is difficult to assess.
- Not all support records were indexable for this report. Given this, the above numbers are an underestimate of the actual support being provided by the UPC.